Oxygen generation, or oxygen separation, respectively, plays an important role in different application areas, covering for example the generation of high purity oxygen, and partial oxidation reactions of hydrocarbons in reactors. The production of high purity oxygen is also of particular interest for small, low noise oxygen generators for medical applications such as home healthcare applications.
Oxygen therapy, for example, is the administration of oxygen as a therapeutic modality. Oxygen therapy benefits the patient by increasing the supply of oxygen to the lungs and thereby increasing the availability of oxygen to the body tissues. The main homecare application of oxygen therapy is for patients with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a disease that effects more than 13 million patients in the US, for example.
For on-demand generation of oxygen, commercial solutions, so-called oxygen concentrators are known. Philips Respironics, for example, is offering a family of oxygen concentrator products for patients requiring oxygen therapy at home (EverFlo) and on the move (EverGo and SimplyGo). Such systems may be based on a pressure swing adsorption process.
Document U.S. Pat. No. 7,604,004 B2 describes an oxygen separator for separating oxygen from ambient air utilizing a vacuum swing adsorption process. Such an oxygen separator comprises a belt, a power module containing a power pack, a reservoir module, a control module containing a user interface and a separation cartridge module.
There is, however, still the need for improvements especially regarding an on-demand generation of oxygen by using pressure swing adsorption processes, or vacuum swing adsorption processes, respectively.